Sorry we didn't post anything about our adventures in Changsha the last couple of days, the internet was being tempermental, we even had to make a very short phone call to our Gabby yesterday with a bad connection.
Wednesday we went to visit Yulu Academy. It is an ancient university where Confuscious taught. It was very quiet and serene with beautiful green gardens. The weather has been warm and very humid, but we have had rain everyday so we know without that it could be a lot hotter. We saw old buildings, many of them were replicas because there were fires and such. Also there were replicas of famous essays. Many things from the academy were destroyed during the cultural revolution. I asked our guide Vicky about that time in China's history.
She said that her grandparents viewed Mao as "Superman" saving the country of China, where her parents who grew up in the 60's have a different view. She said that during the revolution, her parents didn't have the choice to go to university. Instead they had to go to the countryside to work. After about 10 years they came back to the city, so the two generations have very different perspectives on that time in China's history.
We enjoyed the chance to get out of the hotel and see a bit of the area around Changsha. We crossed over a very wide river, they have many floods happening in China now. The traffic to cross the bridge was crazy. At one point we felt a little bump, turns out the police car behind our van tapped the bumper, so that caused even more of a traffic jam as our driver had to get out and check over the damage...there wasn't any...no one was really going fast enough to cause an accident.
Lydia enjoyed walking around the academy and seeing the koi fish in the ponds. She is getting more and more brave about walking and going to new places. Last night she keep pulling Rob's finger...not that way...but tell him she wanted to go out of the room and down the hall to the playroom. She is curious about opening drawers in the hotel room and is content to play with her toys and not be on Rob's lap constantly. She does however have to know where he is at all times, and she has journeyed many times into the bathroom when daddy has to take care of business....now he knows what it is like to be a mommy....no privacy in the bathroom!
Thursday we went to the provincial museum. It had interesting displays of the "three tombs". Artifacts from 210 AD were found in these three tombs around 1970. The tombs were of a high ranking family in the Hunan province. Most of the artifacts were from the tomb of the wife, they even had her body on display which was a bit shocking. Vicky said that they used to display her organs as well, they could tell how and when she died and what she ate by the contents of her stomach. What is amazing to me is that so there are common threads from all ancient civilizations about burials. You know it's not like the Chinese people were communicating with Egyptians asking about the latest trends in burial tombs. But like the terra cotta warriors, many wooden dolls were buried with her so she would servants and music makers in the after life. Food and household items were buried with her as well. Just amazing when you think of how cultures can be so different but so similar as well.
It rained most of the morning so this was good planning on the part of our guide. We had dressed Lydia in a cotton smocked top that had matching jean shorts, but at breakfast we found out the waist of the jean shorts were too big, she kept reaching down the back of her pants and into her diaper. Well, we had already done up her hair with matching yellow bows, so instead of changing outfits completely before we went sight seeing, we just put on a pair of white cotton bloomers that go under another dress. The reason I am telling you this is that Lydia looked like she just had on a short, short dress when we took her out and sure enough a comment was made to our guide that we didn't have enough clothes on her. Vicky didn't say anything to us, but I could tell by the gestures from the older gentleman that she was being scolded for something. I told her that we had brought a light blanket with us and we could put it around Lydia's legs if that would smooth things over. Rob of course was carrying Lydia through the museum, they had strollers to rent, but the people at the counter said she was too big for them. So you can imagine how warm Rob was after carrying our little hot box through the "air conditioned" museum while trying to keep a blanket around her legs.
It seems that strollers were more accepted to use in our other province because they were easier to find there. Vicky has taken us to two different stores to find them. One had none, and the other store we went to yesterday was a beautiful baby store, but all the strollers were the big ones that were a $100 or more, we just want the little umberella stroller to help make the airports coming home easier...so we will have to look in Guangzhou.
After we went to the museum, we asked to the embroidery museum because we heard about this from the Zottarellas when they went to bring home Allie. I wouldn't call it a museum as everything hanging on the wall had a price, but it was a short explanation of the art of embroidery and then we could buy things for Lydia as keepsakes which is what we wanted to do anyway. We found a couple of small handkercheifs and a larger scarf. We also have an outfit for her first Chinese New Year in America.
We leave Changsha tomorrow, just waiting on getting Lydia's passport. We leave the hotel about 5 pm for an 8 pm flight to Guangzhou. We are looking forward to seeing people from our group and hear their Gotcha Day stories. Other people in our group have done blogs as well so we have been checking out their province adventures.
On our floor there are at least 6 other families who adopted on the same day as we adopted Lydia. Most seem to be older kids, ages 3-5. Only one is younger than Lydia and she has a cleft lip and palate that has not been repaired yet. She is only drinking formula, we are going to give our baby food and rice cereal to them to try because Lydia wants nothing to do with baby food and bottles. Only one family we know of is from the states, the others are from Denmark and Canada, so we have been hearing French and Dutch languages in the hallway.
I am going to post more pictures with all the funny stories about what Lydia is doing. Want to get this posted before the internet plays up again!
Love to all!
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